Standing Up for Myself, Losing the Relationship

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In most of the self-help stuff I've read and seen, when you stand up for yourself against someone who is behaving badly or is trying to bully or take advantage of you, the badly-behaving person abruptly stops, admits their mistake, apologizes, and might even become your new best friend. But in my experience, when I stand up for myself to someone, they usually become even more defensive or aggressive and they fight harder to get what they want. I may "win" by continuing to stand my ground, but usually wind up losing their friendship or whatever relationship we had. Here are some examples:

For a class I was taking, the textbook was available at the library, so I checked it out. One guy was really upset that I got the book before he did, and he told me he was going to get the book from me, and he and tried to use the library's policies to get it from me. I stood my ground and held on to the book, but to this day he still speaks to me with hostility.

I explained to my girlfriend that our relationship lacked intimacy and I explained, admittedly poorly, that I wanted a relationship with more intimacy, and if she didn't that was fine, but things probably wouldn't work out between us. She dumped me two days later.

I arranged for a ride to a NASA center with a friend. At the last minute she told me she couldn't take me because she was offering my seat to another friend. I was angry, and I told her it was rude to rescind her offer to me for a ride and give it to someone else. She defended herself and refused to admit wrongdoing. We've hardly spoken since.

My roommate kept getting on my case to clean up my messes, even though the messes that he left were just as bad. I told him that I would clean up my messes if he clean up his. He resisted for a long time, maintaing that only my messes mattered and that his messes were excusable. We finally both cleaned up our messes, but we don't really talk anymore, and there's sort of an unspoken hostile feeling in the air. We're not really friends. I get the feeling like he still resents me for something.

In each of these cases, I could have kept the relationship by giving in and letting the other person have their way. But I stood my ground, and it cost me the relationship. Can someone tell me what's going on here?

Maybe the problem isn't with you standing up for yourself, but with you believing what you read in self-help books. Not everybody is looking to be friends. There are many other kinds of relationships (such as rivals and exes) that make up the interesting variety of human interpersonal experiences.

1) Textbook Tug of War

Some random class mate? I sure wouldn't want to hang around someone who continued to talk to me with hostility.

2) Girlfriend Not on the Same Wavelength

If I were the girlfriend, I probably would have thanked you for your honesty, wished you the best, and said a polite goodbye.

3) NASA No-Go

She's not a friend.

4) My Mess Is Bigger than Your Mess

He resents you for standing up for yourself. But good for you, you did the right thing (I remember your earlier post). Maybe he'll come around in time. Maybe not. If not, it's his loss.

? In my head life works like this:
I try to be fair to you and I want you to try to be fair to me.
I ultimately want to be friends with everyone and I assume other people want the same thing. We are all working towards mutually beneficial goals surely? I don't want to win if it means someone else loses. I don't want to play one-upmanship.
If I say I will do something I'll do it.

I have the same experience as you Surfrider. I expect fairness and honesty and if I stand up for myself in a very polite manner then the relationship is over. This baffles me. How do people have disagreements yet still retain their relationships?

Just because you don't want to play oneupmanship, doesn't mean that isn't the game the OTHER person is playing. Sometimes you really don't have the same goals and want the same outcome as another person, because they are your competitor or even your enemy.

Neurotypicals have a set of behaviors to smooth over conflicts, including apologizing, talking about how they feel, acknowledging the other person's point of view, and making little jokes to lighten the situation after a disagreement. Autistics are notoriously bad at doing all of these things! If you can't perform this complex sequence properly people will still resent you even if you were right in standing up for yourself.

Yeah, I guess those are good ways of thinking of it. The guy who tried to get the textbook from me was in my circle of friends in my grad school cohort, but I don't see him too much anymore. I got the feeling that my roommate was trying to establish himself as the dominant one in the apartment and wanted to show me that he was in charge. I consistently resisted this, and he seems to have given up on that, but now he doesn't seem to know how to relate to me in any other way. This roommate was assigned to me, and I'm starting to like him less because pretty much all he talks about is race, racism, and race-based privilege. He's Hispanic and I'm white, and I know that sociology (his major) blames straight white males for essentially all social problems. So being around him feels a little uncomfortable, even though he seems to put up a friendly front. But it feels like there's this subtext between us of control, victimhood, and assumed privilege, so I have a hard time talking to him.

It's true, I guess not everyone is looking to be friends. Some people want other kinds of relationships.



Even NTs usually don't handle conflict very well. I usually refuse to apologize when I feel that I've done nothing wrong or when I have no intention of changing my behavior. When a person apologizes to me and then continues to do the behavior again, I consider their apology to be dishonest. The problem with these kinds of conflicts is that they do not represent honest mistakes or simple misunderstandings. They're usually evidence of a more longstanding and significant psychological problem, which is why confronting people on these issues is so uncomfortable.

The NT behaviors you listed above are essentially a person pretending that the conflict was a simple misunderstanding, even though it was much more than that. Many times when a person does those things, they're just trying to calm you down and diffuse the tense situation, but they often have no intention of changing their behavior.

Don't look at yourself as the biggest jerk in the room either. Everyone wants to test each other, and get under each others skin. Also, some jokes get taken too seriously, and some don't. I advise you don't also feel like you are a poser, because you are not a poser, you are a great guy, and your avatar picture shows it.

The best way to not get people to walk over you is to not feed in to their attention. It takes two people to argue.

I see in school fights that if the other guy hits the other person, a fight begins, but if the other person walks away, no fight starts, and nothing begins, and so everyone moves on with their day.

To add to self-help books, don't believe everything you see on the internet. The best people to listen to is your family, because they personally know you and can represent you.

Also, college. You are young.

If those are the only outcomes presented, those books are simply unrealistic. Obviously people can respond in a practically infinite number of ways.

In the case of your ex-girlfriend, you did win. She probably broke up with you because she didn't want what you wanted. She did you a favor by ending a relationship that wasn't going to satisfy you.

Arielhawksquill what you are saying is fascinating. This topic and everyone's replies have really opened my eyes. I guess I need to grow up and stop being so naive ☺